Olmert also violated the rules of the conference by dragging something that was off the record onto the record. He accurately, if generally, described how, earlier in the day, Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago and Obama’s former chief of staff, had spoken angrily and bluntly about the way Netanyahu has repeatedly betrayed the friendship of the United States, lecturing Obama in the Oval Office and now, after the U.S. had underwritten the Iron Dome anti-missile system, supported the operation in Gaza, and voted Israel’s way in the U.N., embarrassing the Obama Administration by taking punitive actions against the Palestinian Authority. After describing Emanuel’s remarks, Olmert went on to agree with them. . . .

After Olmert’s session was over, the night concluded with, and I am not making this up, Joseph Lieberman, the soon-to-be-retired senator from Connecticut, and Yossi Vardi, the Israeli digital entrepreneur, doing stand-up comedy onstage. I will spare you the details—even though no one called Chatham House Rules—but suffice to say that Joe Lieberman telling dirty jokes involving pickles is not necessarily the experience of a lifetime.